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Japan’s Opposition Blasts PM Kishida’s Silence on Depleted Uranium Ammo to Ukraine

By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 28.03.2023

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida paid a surprise visit to Ukraine to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Moscow. Both visits came as the announcement of future DU ammo supplies to Ukraine hit the headlines.

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been condemned by the opposition for staying tight-lipped on the UK’s announced delivery of depleted uranium ammunition to the Kiev regime, according to media reports.

Taro Yamamoto, leader of the opposition party Reiwa Shinsengumi, is said to have raised the issue at a budget committee meeting in the Japanese parliament’s upper house.

“Mr Prime Minister, do you intend to encourage the UK not to send such shells?” the politician is cited as asking Kishida.

The head of the Japanese government ostensibly dodged giving a direct answer, saying something to the effect that, “despite studies on the negative effects on human health, no concrete results have been obtained”. However, Yamamoto would not let up, pressing further:

“Actually, such munitions could already be classified as nuclear weapons, … and it was found that there is a risk of cancer … Mr. Prime Minister, during your meeting with Zelensky, did you ask him not to use ammunition with depleted uranium?”

Kishida is said to have responded by saying that, “As for depleted uranium weapons, I didn’t say anything specific about it in my meeting with Zelensky.”

The opposition leader then slammed this response as sending a “bad message,” and added, as a parting “broadside”, that the Prime Minister himself was “from Hiroshima.”

The US dropped two atomic bombs – plutonium Fat Man and gun-type uranium Little Boy – on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August 1945. The bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, mostly Japanese civilians. Neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki hosted any key military installations whatsoever.

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who will chair the Group of Seven (G7) summit scheduled for May, visited Ukraine on March 21. He met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a day after Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited Moscow to meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Kishida’s visit was seen by analysts as tailored to demonstrate that Japan is “the West’s reliable ally”. Even though Kishida embarked on his Kiev visit to show solidarity with Ukraine, Tokyo has been contributing less economic help to Ukraine than other countries of the so-called collective West. Japan has limited itself to sending things like bulletproof vests, helmets and some humanitarian aid. Exports of arms and military equipment in Japan is regulated by the Japanese Arms Export Ban, known as the Three Principles on Arms Exports that prohibit the provision of lethal weapons to other countries.

Earlier, London announced its intent to supply depleted uranium (DU) munitions to Kiev to be used in the US-led proxy war of the collective West against Russia in Ukraine. The announcement was met with broad condemnation from Moscow. Russia warned that DU compounds that remain in the soil after its use as part of projectiles, may be dangerous to humans, animals and the environment for a lengthy amount of time.

“The use of uranium ammunition will cause irreversible harm to the health of the military and civilian population of Ukraine, but NATO is ready to supply them to Kiev,” Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian armed forces, said. He recounted that NATO unleashed about 40,000 shells containing over 15 tons of depleted uranium during the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia.

March 28, 2023 - Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Japan, UK, United States